146 " T HE NUN's STORY" (Atlan tic-Little, Brown), Kathryn Hulme's simple true story, told in the form of a novel, of a young wom- an's entrance into the cloistered life, and of what befel] her thereafter, is a book of great beauty. The volume, the Book- of-the-Month choice for September, tells the tale, in what seems effortless prose and almost certainly is not, of GabrIelle Van der Mal (that is not her real name), who, at the age of twenty-one, became a postulant in one of the holy orders of the Catholic Church in Brussels. The order is not named. It was not a wholly contempla- tive one, and it was not enclosed, for many of the nuns, like Gabrielle, who took the name of Sister Luke, went out into the world as nurses, teachers, and missionaries. But it was an order in which the "grand silence" was observed from vespers until dawn; it enjoined poverty, along with chastity and obedI- ence, and it was strict. I know of no other example of the considerable literature on this subject that conveys the dea of the dedicated life, and the grinding demands that are made upon those who would profess it, with such force, clarIty, and conviction. And yet the author, although she is a recent convert to the Roman Catholic faith, main- tains a complete objectivity. Gabrielle Van der Mal entered the convent some thirty years ago. Her father was one of the leading chest surgeons in Belgium, and she had always been fascInated by the medical arts and had aspired to be a surgical nurse. '\ Her decision to become a nun seems to have been partly the result of an unhapp} experi- \ ence (her father forbade her "( to marry a young man who had insanIty in his family background), but on the oth- er hand she waS genuinely religious. During her noviti- ate she got a nursing degree in tropical medicIne-her ob- jective in her religious life was to become a missionary in the Belgian colonIes-and a diploma in psychiatry. After her investiture, she worked in \\\7' ,'1\" . I,) 1'" .. J f. , I @ I k :t' / f , il \' I .). \\ 4f ...\ .. \ tF 1: BOOKS T he Dedicated Life an Insane asylum maintained by her order in Belgium and then went out to the Congo. She returned on leave in 1939, and the German occupation of Belgium made it impossible for her to go back to the Congo. That is the outer framework of the book; the interior is the subtle story of a struggle to attain perfection in the life of the spirit. At times the story is terrifying in its in tensi- ty, at times moving and human, but never is there a touch of sentimentality. We go through Sister Luke's first years as postulant, novice, and nun step by paInful step. Her goal, like that of all her sisters, is to become a Living Rule, a disciplined perfection of obedience. "You are entering a life against na- ture,)) the Superior General tells the novices. The life of a nun, Sister Luke is further informed, is "an ordinary life lived extraordinarily." A convent is a fabric of rules, governed by a Mother Superior behind whom are two thousand years of experience, wisdom, and obser- vatIon of human beings under this dis- cipline. Sister Luke must learn that there IS only one way to walk-a gliding motIon that produces no swing of the .q , ,. .* Jt + .. ... .. " . .. .' , hips. There is a way to comport the hands, a way to hold the Little Office, which must be read seven times a day, so that its pages do not become soiled, a way to use the eyes, a way to use the voice, which must be modulated so that it just reaches the ears of the person addressed and goes no farther. One does " " ". " f h not say my or mIne, or one as taken a vow of poverty and will never again own anything. One is never alone, day or night, for privacy is renounced. No friendships can be made between nuns; when one is permitted "recrea- tional speech," at least four persons must be present and the subject must be of interest to all four. "The nun dies a little every day," an old nun says to SIS- ter Luke, and she soon finds out what this means. the nun searches her mind for the small desires and the solaces that comfort her in her aloneness, and then she sacrifices these things to please God. But she does not find gratification in these sacrifices- "there is no heroism in the convent" is one of the maxims of the cloIster-because self-congratula- tion, like excessive humility, is a sin of pride, to be confessed at the weekly J ... .. 0 .,. .. Jt Ir .. . o . t . . ",,0 ... * '" M '" . ."1( J/( \ :4 ' f · . . J2t l!? 1l ...,........ · .", -... . .., . . .. · JC. .. L . , - ..